Wallace On Water

In writing this parable, Wallace intended to remark on young people losing touch with the world around them. The older fish and the young fish are obviously representative of older and younger generations of people, respectively. Water surrounds fish and is quite necessary for them to survive -- basically, it is their life -- and the younger fish’s ignorance about this essential thing serves to represent the author’s view that younger people have grown removed from their surroundings and from essential functions of human life.
This line of thinking is not uncommon; a common trend throughout human history is that older generations see younger ones as immoral, spoiled, and socially degenerate. Plato lamented the spoiledness of the youth of his